Turbo tournaments

After playing more of the online turbo multi-table tournaments discussed last week, they strike me as a direct reversal of the slower live tournaments I am used to playing.

In the slower, "professional" live events, players will control pot sizes at the start, taking advantage of small blinds to see flops and get clever after cards. In the late stages, with blinds and antes worth stealing, they will play harder, looking for chances reraise all-in, gambling to fatten their stack for victory. They will do this with any pair, often any ace, often with suited connectors.

In the turbo MTTs it is the other way round. Players move in with anything at the start, happy to gamble for a big stack or an early exit. It is only after the field has shrunk by at least half that they seem to consider the tournament worth taking seriously; at this point, they start thinking about "making the money" and take fewer risks.

So the message here would be to widen your all-in calling range in the early levels (just as you would against short stacks making positional moves in the late stages of a slower tournament) and play more aggressively in the middle stages when opponents have started to care about getting knocked out.

The mistake throughout is to think about money. Players are reckless early on because the buy-in is small, careful later because the prize is big. You must think about bankroll before choosing your tournament; then forget it, because now they are just chips, the tools of the trade. Don't insult them, don't revere them. Use them.